Just when the RIAA
had thought that they were at the helm of the great ship USS Music Bully
and shouting “I’m King of the World”, the Capitalist
Czarist Russians have initiated a music wholly cold war. Isn’t
that precious.

A Russian online
company allofmp3.com
has started selling music by the megabyte for an astounding US$1 greenback
for 100MB (500MB minimum) of loverly music in any format your little
heart desires (MP3, MPEG4-AAC, OGG, etc.). Those tunes are high-speed
delivered to your computer desktop at a pretty impressive bit-rate to
boot as well!

So you’re
saying, “who wants to download some terrible Russian bands music?”
Not so dudes, these are major artists such as Aaron Neville,

Alanis Morissette,
Barenaked Ladies to Metalica, Willie Nelson and ZZ Top. This makes the
price pretty astounding, if it’s for real, that is.

We had to ask if this
is for real and allofmp3.com claimed that it does pay license fees for
all the music it sells; so if that's true, then they are legitimate "subject
to the law of the Russian Federation on copyright and related rights".
There is no indication in dealings with allofmp3.com over several weeks
that this is one of those dubious enterprises so much loved by the Russian
mafia. Our credit card doesn't seem to have been abused, and while we
have no legal qualifications, we can't see that it fails to comply with
the Berne Convention on copyright.

"We can't see
any legal or moral objection to using the site," Charles Wright writes
in the Sydney Morning Herald. "We're using the material for private
use, there is no restriction in this country on the parallel importing
of recorded music and none of the artists seem to have been deprived of
their rights. While we suspect the recorded music industry would like
to earn more from their music, we're in no position to judge the arrangements
they might have made with Russia."

Well, if this is on
the straight and narrow, and the RIAA doesn’t have a Music Mafia
wing in Russia, and the site figures out that they need to have an English
version, then Apple iTunes Music Store and Napster are in for a very rude
awakening . . . . an potentially a huge dent in their wallets income!
We’ll keep you posted.